Drawing a Likeness

you hey everybody Aaron Blais here and welcome to another episode of Aaron's art-tips now today I want to talk to you about how to create a likeness in your drawing okay so whether you're out sketching on location or you're sketching a model in a figure class or you're sketching something from photographs I have certain techniques in the way that I look at objects look at images and translate it in my brain and get it on to the surface that I'm drawing on whether it's going to be you know traditionally on pad and paper or if I'm working digitally now today I'm going to work digitally and I'm going to work from a photograph because that's the best way to show you in this medium right now but keep in mind that the techniques that I'm going to use today and show you are exactly the same as if I was sitting like I said in Figure class or outside painting landscapes or anything like that these are ways of creating a likeness how to create what you see and get it onto your paper and a lot of it it just has to do with how to see and in comparing and looking at angles and all that kind of stuff so anyway I'm going to stop jabbering about it and let's just get into it and I'll show you so here I've got a document that I've opened up and are created and over here on the left you can see I've got this photograph that I shot out in Wyoming last year of this bighorn sheep and I thought you know what I like to draw animals and so I thought I'll just go ahead and show you how I do that now normally I work on two different screens I'll keep all my reference on one screen and keep this workspace nice and clean but I can't show you two screens so I'm going to just keep the the Sheep right here and I'm going to go ahead and start drawing now one of the best pieces of advice that I can give students is before you start drawing especially if you're drawing animals and that sort of thing maybe something you're not familiar with just stop for a second and just look observe look at the forms look at the proportions look at the textures and just try to soak that kind of stuff in even if I'm working with a photograph like I am here I'll just really just sit and analyze it a little bit and just see what's going on okay so once that you know like I'm looking at the shape of the head which is basically this triangular shape I'm looking at the horns which are very round and I'm when I start drawing I'm going to start from the very broad and we're going to work towards the detail okay so the first thing I'm going to look at is I'm going to that strikes me as I'm looking at this horn now if you follow this horn if I were to follow this around and do a circle it would be just that it's a pretty round circle so I'm going to go ahead and grab my brush let's I go ahead and I use custom brushes and there we go and I'm going to grab a nice dark color and I'm gonna make my brush a little smaller there all right so um and then I like to go dark and let's create a layer on top I always do my all of my drawing layers and painting layers always break them up so we've got a separate layer this is our drawing layer the first thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to draw very broadly kind of this big circle I'm going to follow it around very quickly okay so that's eventually going to be our antler are not antler it's a horn horns are permanent antlers are shed by like deer and elk and that sort of thing but these are horns and these grow for forever on the on the animal so then I'm going to look I'm looking over here and I look okay that's what that's about where that that forehead hits okay so I'm just going to mark that off now the next thing I'll probably look at is I want to I want to see where this neck and head and everything are going to start coming in so I'm looking at this distance and that looks to be about one third of the way across if I'm looking at it this way I go okay one two three it's about it's about one third so I'll do the same thing here about the same angle looking at this angle here and I'll just go right about there okay and put a little tick mark alright and then out now I'm going to look at this angle see how it comes down see that angle along the head and it feeds right into that arc right there and so I want to kind of mimic this shape along here so I'm just going to very quickly run a line down and then bring this arc around bring it right down there so now you can see I've got this shape here I've got this over here okay now it feels like I'm I want to pull it over here just a bit there we go okay keep in mind I keep this very loose all right and then look at this s shape right here Brown see that s right there I'm going to add that in here I'm slowly there there's that nice s shape and that goes right into this eye so I'm very loosely indicating a shape there so now I'm looking at basically overall this head shape see how it kind of it comes down and just feeds I'm thinking about you know the form all the way through so I know this jaw line comes down and around and that jaw line is going to come up the other side and feed right into that horn on the other side and also if I look at the jaw line down here and draw a line across see how it goes below it goes below that that antler or the horn on this side over here so I know it's going to be about here and that jaw line will come right about in there and then I can just draw that and connect it and if I draw if I look at this here and come up I can see that it's slightly over from the top come down and I can start drawing this up and I can start to connect it by drawing through there we go drawing through like so okay now I like to draw my little center lines you know if there's a center line here it comes down and right down the nose there so I'm going to come in here oh let me let me here we go yeah let me get rid of that line there we go cool ok so now I'm going to there we go get on the layer there I'm going to start pulling in I know that the the snout here comes out a little you know I'll come out here about the same distance if I draw a line up see I'm just comparing I'm looking at where this snout is draw a line up and it's out here about half as much so I'm going to go about half as much and come down here and just kind of mark it off all right now if I drew a line from the top of the nose I kind of compare you know I look at okay it's kind of under the bottom of the eye and it hits in this area so if I come across here there's a bottom of the eye that's about where the top of that snout is going to be okay and then there there's the there's that side of the face and then right up about here right about even it's almost even maybe just a little bit below that horn I'm going to draw the bridge of the nose coming out okay so you can see I'm just really comparing all over the place I'm looking at like you know like this shape this creates a little diamond shape over here so I'm going to create a little diamond shape there now remember this is all kept very rough and I can go in and modify it later so now I've kind of got I'm kind of getting there I can already start to see the shape of everything coming together now I want to get the bottom of that chin once again the bottom of that chin is pretty even with the bottom of that horn so I'm going to draw this over take a line there and if I look at this see that shape right there kind of a mushroom cap shape it's going to draw that in and it comes up there's a mouth right there and then I know that that bottom chin kind of comes in there oh doesn't quite line up so I'm going to adjust it make that I'm going to bring that size down just a little bit of it so now we've got let's get that nose in so once again bringing that center line down like so I know that it's just going to go in and then up I'm looking at some of those shape relationships I see it comes on you know almost all the way over and then down that curls under here understanding the form let's just color that in okay now looking at this I see how this eye is pretty well over it's way over here we over in this area right underneath this part of the horn so I'm going to come to the horn here and just draw this eye in and I'm looking at the shape of the eye and it kind of comes up like this if I draw it you know pretty extreme or basic you know the basic shape is this kind of square rectangular shape diamond shape on its end and then with the little corner of the eye there okay now we can draw in a ridge some of that orbital Ridge there I guess it would be that kind of comes down like so we get some neat little dark areas here now if I quickly just color that in there okay let's go ahead and get these ears in so the ear comes up I want to push this up a little higher ear comes up down you can see that there's a fair amount so I can see here already that I I made this a little bit small so what I want to do is I can I can adjust that in Photoshop by just grabbing it with my lasso tool and just Romero moving it over I want to move that over here that feels a little better I'm gonna deselect it and go back to my brush tool and then fix the drawing now if you were doing this on paper obviously you erase it and you redraw it okay there so that feels better so now I can come in get this ear I can see that it comes in you know even with the bottom of the eye comes in there right there and we've got this nice shape with all the fur that comes in around the ear there I like this shape in the and the horn these ridges let's bring that around like so once again I just want to reiterate I'm staying very loose I'm drawing very quickly this is how I would work if I'm working with figures or anything else outside look at this shape here see that I want to mimic that shape so I got it here and I'm looking at that that's going to give me the angle on the neck and it starts to curl out above the bottom of the jaw so the jaws here so that part of the neck is actually going to curl out out here and then it comes down around like so I'm going to carry this through looking at this shadow area like so now looking at this this line in the neck see how it starts out pretty straight down and then it curves to the right so I'm going to do the same thing curve it to the right okay so now I've got that laid in let's get that other horn in so obviously it should be even with the top of this horn here so let's bring the draw you know imaginary line coming across and I'm going to mimic that angle where it's coming up and then this basically feeds right into that line that we came up here so I'm going to feed that right up into that horn like so let's get that year in there now so now it's just a matter of pulling all these pieces together and then once again that brings me right to the other eye there I can see that there and then that eat of that other horn comes out here once again we want that to be even even with the bottom of the horn here so I'm going to draw a line across draw it right across here I'll be out here there we go and it's very thin from that angle it's very very thin there I'll keep in mind this is once again this is how I mimic this is how I you know I catch the likeness on if I'm doing portraits if I'm doing figure drawing now let's I still feel like this horn is just too small I can see that those shapes see these shapes aren't quite matching up so I'm going to just move this out I'm going to move it out even more there that feels even better there see that so you can always make adjustments come back but by making these comparisons it at least gets you in the right ballpark and then as you draw you can make adjustments okay so there we go so very quickly we've laid in when I get this Ridge right here now I'm trying to you know I'm thinking about the form you know there's a ridge that comes up you know if I'm looking at the form it kind of comes like this and then comes around again I'm thinking about all of that form as I'm drawing I'm going to go ahead and shrink this down a little bit - whoops there we go I'm gonna shrink it down just a little bit I want to give myself a little more room there so I can continue I want to bring this down I see that shoulders coming right where it's supposed to be like so get that this dark area in here we got some I'm drawing in the direction of the FIR same direction that the FIR is growing I'm trying to draw in that direction okay now I can come in and round that out a little bit keep in mind this brush that I'm using is still fairly large I'm going to go ahead I'm going to I'm going to knock the size up a a little larger there we go I changed the size of the canvas so that I could go a little more detailed with my brush so here you can see the bright I kept the the brush the same size but now the brush is smaller it's because I knocked the size of the canvas up okay so we've got it roughed in and so just by comparing some of these areas you can see how quickly we were able to get a likeness okay now I keep these you know use these techniques when you're doing you know portraits and like I said figure drawing I'm going to keep reiterating that because you know I whether I'm using photography as a reference or I'm using life as a reference I use the same techniques so if I'm working digitally what I'll do is I'll knock this layer down there we go and knock that layer down the opacity and create a new layer on top if I'm working traditionally quite often I'll kind of rub it down a little bit and and then I'll start going in with a darker value and that's what we're going to do here so we've got this roughed in so now what I can do is I can start coming in now and really kind of hone some of these details you know that orbital bone around the eye I'm going to get that and I like the the shape of that eye so I'm going to accentuate that a little bit I really I really like that there we go and get that reflection and I like to leave I like to leave that underdrawing showing through even if it's just light it keeps the it keeps the drawing alive I think it gives it a life I can give a little that indicate that Ridge there just a little bit once again I'm going to knock that opacity down so I can be a little more subtle with the line work but once again drawing I'm drawing in the direction of the fur you know that's that's part of how I here we go part of how I give them the drawing a little bit more life to it you know if you start drawing a you know in directions that really make don't make sense then the drawing looks awkward and so I always try to keep the drawing looking from looking awkward by trying to follow form with my line work and trying to follow fur texture that sort of thing and so here you can see I'm still working very quickly but I'm really just kind of going in and and cementing what I've would have established you know that rough drawing is the framework and then when you come in with these the refined line that's where you really kind of laying it down you're laying down the final look that final drawing there we go and get that other eye in there is very subtly there we go and I've got a little bit of fur coming up here that comes around there now I finally got this I like that real strong Ridge right there now in here you know I'll just come in and loosely indicate some of these growth rings and that's exactly what they are their growth rings these are all you know from the years that it's taken these these horns to grow they create these growth rings just like a tree on the on the sheet and they you know they get I'm trying to give the line a little bit of life so I'm getting some little ridges in there and that feeds right into the ear there now it's I'm going to very quickly now look I'm my line work is following the form in this in this case here it's following the form I want to get this nose in here and it curls under this is an empty space in here underneath there there we go that snout comes up and into the nose and once again I want to get that that see that subtle little lip there this little subtleties like that that you need to look for that will give the drawing some accuracy and a little bit of authenticity in life now these are the kinds of things especially with animal drawing that people will look for to make sure that the the animal is drawn accurately once again see how I'm indicating form with the direction of the fur now here I'm just going to bring this down there we go and then bring this on a that all kind of curves in that way and I'm going to let that nice clean bridge of the hills come right in there we've got a little bit of fur textures in here there's a duct right here on the on the sheep I'm going to draw that in want to indicate there may be some of that fur coming up you see how quickly we can do this just by looking at angles comparing there we go there we go that's coming together and you know comparing angles comparing you know where certain parts fall in relation to other parts if you can kind of visually compare those areas then your accuracy will get stronger and will get better and that's how you get likenesses it's really not about oh I can just draw what I see now this has come from years of using some of these techniques and and just comparing and pretty much anybody can do that you don't have to be a you know a natural artist in order to draw a likeness if you can work up these techniques in order to create a likeness like I said by comparing and that sort of thing then you know you'll end up drawing better let's quickly come up here get this guy and once again I'm showing form by drawing those ridges well those ridges are really cool in the sense that they help me they help me describe the form of that horn and that there's a this face comes right up along here the face of that horn there we go comes around like so we're going to bring that straight down keep it off of that nose there's a little bit you can see over here there's a little bit of negative space and it's got some funny ridges to it there we go so there we go now there's the line work and we did that really quickly but you can see now if I wanted to start painting this would be that would be the start of the painting now let's just for just out of curiosity let's just compare them and see how accurate it is so I'm going to create a free transform it we're going to shrink it up see if we can get it to match see how accurate we are I'll shrink that just a little bit more you know all in all it's not too bad you can see the the eye is probably off a little bit and the neckline is a little bit off but you can see that we're pretty much matching our shapes here and so this is how this is how I find my my likenesses so if I turn these you can see all that I did shift a bit you can see that the distance between the eye in here and here I miss that I made it too long I made that snout just a little too long but all in all it's a fairly decent likeness and this is this is my technique and you know if I felt strong enough I would probably go in and I would adjust that if it really was changing the look of of the sheep I think in this case it's probably okay but even then if you know if it was something I wasn't crazy about I could take this actually I'm going to take that again I could take that and just whoops there we go and just move it in like so if I wanted to like so and then I could reject the drawing but I'm not going to because I like it the way it is so that's my technique and then also if I want to real quick I'm just going to show you since we've already got the drawing watch this this is fun I'm going to grab a little darker tone and just show you how quickly you can lay in some some nice tone I'm going to come in here I love these kind of organic looking brushes I just think they're great I've got I make a lot of my own brushes and so that's what these are here and knock that opacity up but you can see you know I quickly get a likeness and then you can just use that drawing and get in there and start painting and having some fun with it you know art creating all of that it's meant to be fun it's not meant to be painful so don't let it be painful change that value there get that a little later like so maybe get a little bit boom on the eye like that that's nice a little bit of light there I'll bring that brush a little bigger there we go get some light along that rim of that and I'll go horn I keep calling it an antler it's not an antler - horn there's a difference there we go maybe a little bit in there and get these look at the values you know the values in here lighter so I'm just going to quickly do that maybe along here like the darken that back up a little bit adding some texture and I come in and set that to multiply put a layer on top set that to multiply grab that mid-tone watch what happens when I set it to multiply and start painting in shadows very very quickly and once again I'm just kind of comparing drawing very quickly this is my technique you know people ask me Aaron how do you do this stuff so fast well I I when it comes to the drawing part of things I do these techniques I compare that's how I get my accuracy and and then when it comes to painting I just paint very loose and I you know the details which you can save to later they go a long way and you don't need a lot of them so I generally keep my paintings pretty loose there we go and then one last little finishing touch for the sketch I'm going to create a layer on top and go really bright and just add a few little just little detail eat uh ch's there we go nice a little highlight there maybe some nice little highlights along the hair and being very tasteful with it this is where I'm kind of making it my own you know I can your art is yours you know what if you're using photography don't be a slave to it do whatever you want do what looks good I'll just create a little there we go and then a little wetness under the eye oh yeah there we go get that nice and wet there it is and then some come back here let's darken that a little bit and create let's create I like to show off the form so let's create a little reflected light there there we go maybe some down here as well there and one more time let's come back to our shadow layer darken this up let's darken this a little bit dark in that nose get this there we go that feels better already oh yeah I get that darker lip there and that my friends is how I create a likeness so that's very quick but you can see in a matter of minutes we were able to create this quick sketch and you know I would use this you know possibly for a full color painting down the road but this is how I I lay out the framework I I you know compare you know look at angles look at volumes look at you know how like that you know that circular horn that's the first thing I saw you know find those types of things that are going to get you through and get you started and then just continue to look at you know and compare all the way through and you'll you'll create a likeness alright so that's my art lesson for today I hope you got something out of it use these techniques I'm a guarantee you're going to start seeing your your drawings improve you'll start to draw what you see a lot better okay so until next week I'll talk to you later bye hey thanks for watching if you like what you saw please hit the red subscribe button down below spread the word and also if there's something that you're not seeing that you'd like to see let us know we'd love to hear from you thanks a lot

Channel: The Art of Aaron Blaise

Views: 199,424

Rating: 4.9687018 out of 5

Keywords: drawing, tutorial, Adobe Photoshop (Software), lessons, likeness, accuracy, Aaron's Art Tips, art, Draw, Artist, Lesson, cintiq, Wacom (Business Operation)

Id: tnrqUx4XhtM

Length: 32min 27sec (1947 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 03 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/thubakabra]

Great that you found it and shared it. Thanks!

[u/slytherkain]

I posted a thread about looking for a youtube video - this is the one haha. Really great follow through a guy does of a ram. He uses observation of lines and shapes to draw from a reference photo. It's a good way of learning form and anatomy from a practical point of view.